Aafia
Siddiqui's Mother Speaks Out (And Other Commentaries On
The Verdict)

11 February 2010

By El-Hajj Mauri' Saalakhan

Assalaamu Alaikum (Greetings of Peace):

With the unjust conviction of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui last
week in a New York federal courtroom, the U.S.
government opened a hornets nest both here and abroad.
Huge demonstrations in a number of Pakistani cities
have combined with a growing array of critical voices
on this side of the world to send a message loud and
clear (to the powers that be) that this particular
conviction (in the war on Islam) is not going to
recede quietly into the shadows anytime soon!

Insha'Allah, within the next day or two I will put the
finishing touches on an analysis of my own that makes
the argument that what we have witnessed in MOST of
the cases involving Muslims post 9/11 is Jury
Nullification in Reverse! (With Aafia's case being the
most graphic and troubling example to date!)

With that said, what follows is a series of articles
which collectively illustrate how deeply this latest
verdict has resonated throughout the community. Aafia
is due back in court for sentencing on Thursday, May
6, 2010. It is our prayer that America will witness
(on that date) the largest demonstration ever
organized for a Muslim political prisoner in America.

We are committed to doing everything in our power to
achieve that objective, insha'Allah. Aafia's freedom
will NOT be won in the courts of America...so let us
not waste our time or money with such a useless
exercise! It is time to "petition the government" in
the court of public opinion, with a declaration rooted
in collective conscience: NOT IN OUR NAME!!!

Please Read On, and Pass Along.

Aluta Continua
(The Struggle Continues)

US verdict lays bare real US face

Asmat Siddiqui, mother of Dr Aafia Siddiqui said the
US court verdict against her daughter has exposed the
real face of the USA and US downfall has now surely
set in, Geo News reported late Wednesday night.
Talking to media late night, the mother of innocent Dr
Aafia urged the people of the country not go on
rampage in protest against the verdict, adding she is
glad that her daughter is guiltless and innocent and
the verdict is a gravely insulting slap on the face of
the US.

Part of the video clip (above) features an artist's
rendition of an African American judge (see below)
which I've repeatedly seen in a number of reports.
This was not the judge who presided over the trial.
For the record, the presiding judge (Richard Berman)
is Caucasian, and probably Jewish.

The Siddiqui Conviction: A Verdict ‘Based On Fear, Not
On Fact’

It should go without saying but yet again needs to be
repeated: in an effective justice system, justice not
only must be done but it must be seen to be done. In
this respect the trial of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, which
ended in New York on Wednesday was a miserable
failure.

Although most Americans haven’t even heard the name of
this MIT-trained neuroscientist, Dr Siddiqui’s case
has captured the attention of much of her native
Pakistan. Her conviction on two counts of attempted
murder quickly led Pakistan’s President Asif Ali
Zardari to direct his government to offer her legal
assistance.

AP reported:

Pakistanis shouted anti-American slogans and burned
the Stars and Stripes on Thursday in protest of a New
York jury’s conviction of a Pakistani woman accused of
trying to kill Americans while detained in
Afghanistan.

The protests drew thousands in at least four cities,
demonstrating the widespread distrust, and even
hatred, of the U.S. in this country whose cooperation
Washington needs to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan.

The New York Times said:

Defense lawyers argued that an absence of bullets,
casings or residue from the M4 [-- the rifle allegedly
snatched and fired by the accused --] suggested it had
not been shot. They used a video to show that two
holes in a wall supposedly caused by the M4 had been
there before July 18 [the date of the alleged crime].

They also pointed out inconsistencies in the testimony
from the nine government witnesses, who at times gave
conflicting accounts of how many people were in the
room, where they were sitting or standing and how many
shots were fired.

Ms. Siddiqui’s lawyers said they had not decided
whether to appeal. They suggested that prosecutors had
played to New Yorkers’ anxieties about terror attacks.

“This is not a just and right verdict,” Elaine Sharp,
one of Ms. Siddiqui’s lawyers, said outside the
courtroom. “In my opinion this was based on fear but
not fact.”

If the views of jurors were shaped by irrational
fears, it seems as though Judge Richard M. Berman
suffered the same frailty. Far from recognizing that
the conduct of the trial had wider implications for
the relations between the US and Pakistan, so-called
security considerations meant that journalists with
the least interest in covering the case had the best
access while those with the greatest interest weren’t
allowed into the court room.

As Petra Bartosiewicz reported for Time magazine early
in the proceedings:

[Dr Siddiqui's] case has been major news in much of
the Muslim world — and a crush of journalists from
Pakistan have been struggling to gain access to a
trial hemmed in by security-conscious New York City
officials. How the foreign press is able to follow the
court proceedings — and thus perceive the fairness of
the trial — will have an impact on upcoming
high-profile terrorism trials like that of Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed and four other suspected 9/11
plotters, likely to be held in the same courthouse as
the Siddiqui case.

“If we were able to file a transcript of the
proceedings they’d probably print it,” Iftikhar Ali, a
reporter with the Associated Press of Pakistan, said
of the Siddiqui trial. “That’s how much interest there
is in this case.” But Ali, like many other reporters
from overseas, has been hampered in gaining access to
the live proceedings. Journalists from Pakistan on
assigment in New York have been largely excluded from
the courtroom. Because of tight restrictions observed
by the presiding Judge Richard Berman, not a single
Pakistani reporter had been granted a press credential
when opening statements began on Tuesday. They were
instead sent to an overflow courtroom to watch the
proceedings via video link.

In the overflow room this week I met journalists from
Pakistan with United Nations and U.S. State Department
issued press credentials. They work for some of the
biggest outlets in their countries, including BBC
Urdu, the Associated Press in Pakistan, Jang, Dawn,
Geo and Haj TV. None were issued credentials for the
trial, though some had applied weeks ago. We watched
the proceedings on a flat screen television. The view
didn’t include any of the exhibits being offered into
evidence, among them multiple diagrams of the scene of
the shooting and incriminating documents allegedly
written by Siddiqui. At one point a key government
eyewitness stepped off the witness stand and out of
range of both the camera and microphone to use a
visual aid to demonstrate where he was during the
shooting. He was permitted to give much of his
testimony off camera.

Ali, who has been at the court every day of the trial
— including jury selection — was granted access to the
main courtroom for about five minutes on the first
day, but was escorted out when court security guards
realized he was not on the list of approved media. At
the time the only other occupants of the four-row
press box, which covers half the available seating in
the courtroom with room for about 20 individuals, were
one each from the The New York Times, The New York
Post and the New York Daily News. The court has
officially recognized only media who carry New York
Police Department issued press passes, traditionally
reserved for reporters who regularly cover crime
scenes and certain public events in the city. Out of
the approximately 30 such individuals from U.S. news
outlets who were eligible to attend the trial, most
were not present for opening statements.

“We’ve been coming to all the pretrial hearings and we
were never told there was going to be a different
system for the trial. We were told the press will be
allowed,” Ayesha Tanzeem, a journalist with Voice of
America Urdu said. After TIME made inquiries on
Thursday, individuals in the overflow room, including
the Pakistani journalists, were for the first time
ushered into the main courtroom during the afternoon
session. But with the exception of a BBC Urdu reporter
and a Samaa TV reporter who received official passes,
none have been granted a press credential that would
guarantee them a seat on future days.

The decision to accept solely the NYPD pass for the
Siddiqui trial came from the judge’s chambers, says
Elly Harrold of the District Executive’s office, the
administrative arm at the federal courthouse. “Of
course there are exceptions,” Harrold said, “but I’m
not at liberty to discuss that.”

Although Siddiqui is not charged with any
terrorism-related crime, security concerns are
paramount though the procedures seem to be unevenly
enforced. During the lunch break on the first day of
the Siddiqui trial a group of Muslim men praying in
the waiting areas outside the courtroom were
afterwards asked to leave the floor. That prevented
them from securing a place in line for the afternoon
session. Several Muslim women in hijabs were also
given similar instructions, but others in the same
area, dressed in business attire, including this
reporter, were permitted to stay. On the second day of
the trial metal detectors were posted outside the
courtroom and individuals were asked for photo
identification and their names and addresses were
logged by court security officers. At the close of
proceedings on Thursday defense attorney Charles Swift
protested the practice. “The suggestion is that the
gallery may be a threat,” said Swift, calling the
measure “highly prejudicial.”

If Charles Swift sounds like a familiar name it’s
because he has the rare distinction of having stood up
and successfully defended his country while its
Constitution faced attack from the Bush
administration. In Hamdan vs Rumsfeld, Swift won a
major victory for the rule of law.

The case of Dr Siddiqui exposes a moral fallacy that
has haunted America throughout the war on terrorism.
It is this: that injustice is something that can only
be done to the innocent.

We have abandoned what used to be the universally
recognized foundation of a just legal system: that it
treats the guilty and the innocent with fairness and
impartiality.

(For fascinating background on the Siddiqui case,
read Declan Walsh’s November 2009 report in The
Guardian.)